Collapsible spaces and distant storyworlds in (trans-)cultural memory studies

Maria Elisabeth Dorr

doi:10.1080/20004214.2019.1644129

Abstract

ABSTRACTRebecca Walkowitz’s observation that contemporary novels tend to be “born translated” involves the notion that they equally tend to be “born in motion”; they are often already, conceptually, on the road to faraway readers during their moments of conception. A first, more narrowly defined objective of my essay is to examine the narrative strategies used in Dave Eggers’s What Is the What (2007) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) that facilitate and respond to this dimension of motion in particular travels of memory. In a broader scope, this analysis will be embedded into an appraisal of the potentials of recent theorizing both in narratology (i.e. the study of narrative) and in memory studies to understand the dynamics at play in the reception of far-travelled narrative memory media. It is a central proposition of this essay that the two research fields share an amplitude of common concerns with regard to questions of reception and should therefore be brought into a close dialogue. The present study explores how some of these intersections between narratology and memory studies can be approached through the notions of “distance” and “proximity.”

Highlights

The dimensions of “travel” and “locatedness” that this special issue on memory studies has chosen as its central analytical categories describe aspects that have likewise acquired increasing relevance in the study of narrative fiction
A first, more narrowly defined objective of this essay is to examine the narrative strategies that facilitate and respond to this dimension of memory travel in What Is the What and Half of a Yellow Sun. This analysis will be embedded into an appraisal of the potentials of recent theorizing both in the study of narrative and in memory studies to understand the dynamics at play in the reception of far-travelled narrative memory media
The two research fields share an amplitude of common concerns with regard to questions of reception, and it can reasonably be assumed that it should prove profitable to both fields to be brought into a close dialogue

Summary

Introduction

The dimensions of “travel” and “locatedness” that this special issue on memory studies has chosen as its central analytical categories describe aspects that have likewise acquired increasing relevance in the study of narrative fiction. Understanding the construction of storyworlds (in memory media) as acts of memory, I propose that a reader’s perception of her own distance or proximity towards this world is of central concern.

Results

Conclusion